


Chasing Footsteps

by orphan_account



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Curse AU, Darling Pan - Freeform, F/M, Gen, this was orphaned b/c im sick of getting comments and asks asking for updates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 02:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were cursed. (But it was a different kind of curse.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I.

They’ve been running and chasing each other for ages – for ages and ages and ages. It’s always been like this.

It’s  _their_  curse.

When Regina found at about the forgettable teenager and his little friend – literally, that girl is  _short_  – she’d decided they’d get their own curse. Yes, because they are  _that_  special – but she forgets about them, soon after her own curse settles in, and she’s adopted Henry, and everything begins to feel like how it should have been – because it’s everything she  _wants_.

Peter Pan and Wendy Darling are doomed. Well, it’s more like  _she_  is doomed. Rather – he is not, in a way, because the Evil Queen didn’t know him so well – didn’t know that she was  _damning_  him the wrong way – she was only condemning  _her_ , the  _bird_  – but it’s not like it matters to her.

In the Enchanted Forrest – of what’s left of it, anyhow, because everyone is  _gone_  and it’s so  _empty_  – Wendy stumbles down another hillside. Her lungs and legs are burning from running for so long – but she had two days to rest, two whole  _days_ , with a few hours of sleep scrambled in somehow – but she  _knew_  he’d been somewhere near by – and as soon as she gets that feeling – like something’s crawling up her spine from the base up to the back of her skull – she’s on her feet, scraping her palms as she struggles to gain balance and get the sleepiness out of her system before he could catch  _up_  to her – and she can’t let that happen, no, no,  _no_.

Dead leaves and twigs crunch and snap under her bare feet as she tries to keep her feet moving –  _faster, faster, faster_  – as her ears strain to hear any type of give away – that would reveal to him to her – but she’s heard and seen  _nothing_. She feels it though, she  _feels_  him – it’s like he’s sliding his fingers around her spine, plucking the vertebrae like strings on a cello – so she has to keep running, running away from  _him_.

It’s cold here. There is frost lining the naked branches, on the leaves underfoot – but she can’t feel it. She can feel each sting and slap as her feet hit the ground, as their blackened soles ( _she’s been running for so long she hardly notices anymore_ ) but she can’t feel the cold. Her feet are numb, anyway – the rest of her? The rest of her is frozen, the rest of her feels like she should be found dead in a ditch somewhere near here ( _where is here, even? Where is anywhere when all she sees is trees?_ ) – the rest of her prickles and burns and aches, it’s like there are tiny needles being jabbed into her skin –

_“Wendy!”_

The gleeful screech cuts through the air like jagged shards glass would slice so (too) easily through her skin if he so chose to kill her, and fear spikes up her spine – shoots up like some cold bolt of lightning shot up from her spine – and adrenaline makes her go just a little bit faster – makes her heart beat a  _hell_  of a lot louder – as she feels her body  _fly_ down the embankment, her dress and tangled hair flying behind her – and she begins to  _hear_  it – the wind picking up in the branches – the leaves on the ground flitting past her feet as she nearly trips as her feet meet a bit of solid, flattened ground. She feels something sharp – twig, root, or rock, she doesn’t chance a glance down to see – cut at the side of her foot, and she knows that she’s bleeding – warm blood is coating her foot, filling the space between her dirty toes ( _don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t you dare think about it Wendy Darling or it shall be the death of you if you do_ ).

Wendy is used to this – she’s been doing this for so  _long_ , she can’t remember  _not_  running through these woods. All she knows is that there is a devil hiding under the skin of the boy-king ( _why a king? Why does she know him as a king?_ ), and that he means to eat her alive and wear her bones for a crown if she lets herself slip into his clutches (and if she does, for too  _long_ ) – or something just as sinister, she’s always run away before she could find out what could happen next after he’d managed to grab her – drag her down – and steal the air from her lungs whilst filling her up with a dark, foreboding feeling that curled around her ribcage and crept into her heart like a lethal ailment waiting to strike at her when she was most vulnerable – when he’d pried open her ribs and ripped out her beating heart in his hands.

The calling of her name is loud in her ears. It makes her want to wince – it makes the roots of her teeth rattle and her molars jolt in their sockets. So she makes herself run  _faster_ , because she will not  _allow_ today to be the day – another day – that his fingers will wrap around her wrist or tangle within her hair and  _yank_  – and she will go down, down, down, and hit the ground – and he will be there to steal her oxygen, just like the last time – and time before that – and the time before that.

(She doesn’t remember a time when it wasn’t like this.  _That_  is her curse.)

“ _Wendy, **Wendy**  Darling – my  **bird** ,_” he taunts, and she chances one glance over her shoulder – and she  _is_  flying faster, her feet barely touching the ground –  _she rarely ever goes so fast on her feet_  – as the ground beneath her feet steepens, till she is running down hill – and he is in sight, he is  _closer_  – not close enough, not nearly to snatch her up and away, to another place – to a clearing, to a river, to a lake frosted over with bits of ice ( _why is it always so cold here, in this hell?_ ) but close enough that she knows when she needs to go  _faster_.

So she does.

Minutes drag by, as her feet stumble on, and she knows that she’s climbing a hill – a steep one – and she doesn’t know where she is. She never knows where she his – this forest is endless and it is always  _lifeless_ and the wind is now roaring in her ears, as is his voice, as chases after her – quick with deft feet, never seeming to tire, slowing to increase the fun ( _his_  fun) of the game – yes, this is all a game – a game that’s been going on for  _eternity_  –

Wendy stops dead, nearly toppling forward, the back of her throat tasting of blood and her limbs burning, as her toes dig into the dirt beneath her calloused feet. Her heart beats too loudly in her ears – she momentarily forgets that the land is always brown and gray and cold and  _dead_ , she only forgets for a  _second_  that there is a  _devil boy_  chasing her footsteps – because below her, far, far below her –

There is  _water_.

A water _fall_.

She stands above it, it roars in her ears. Clean water – foamy, icy-looking water – falls below her, straight down, and she thinks that it’s a river – or something – but she can see rushing water, deep, by the looks of it, far, far below her, and she realizes she’s found a cliff – a cliff she’s never been on – never  _seen_  – and something lights up inside of her, something crackles at the back of her mind, and she whirls around.

Still a good distance away,  _he_  stands at the base of the hill, looking up at her. Something caught between a smirk and a snarl twists his features. He thinks he’s won – he thinks she’ll try and run past him – it’s what she usually does when she runs into a cliff like this – but this is _new_ , and her eyes want to feast upon it; it is a desire fiercer than the instinct to keep running from this devil boy.

(Somewhat.)

He holds out his hands, fingers stretching towards her – ready to curl around her spine and bury her within the confines of his twisted, warped mind – and she’s about to let out a plea from a parched mouth that’s never demanded water, nor food – just air, just the air the breathes, that burns and swirls within her lungs. She takes a tiny step back, and his knife-grin widens. The back of her foot meets  _air_  – and she knows what she has to do –

Something pops out at her, and she turns her head downwards – _something feels strange_  – and she sees that there – there is  _green_ under her feet. It makes her heart stutter – stop – skip a few beats – and she marvels at the soft grass, of blades of dampness that she had not even  _noticed_  because of the fear coursing in her veins alongside the fading adrenaline – that is picking up again, like the volume of her heartbeat – because she glares at him – stiffens her spine – and she throws herself backwards.

(The green means that Emma has the clock moving in Storybrooke. The green is a  _sign_ , a sign no one in this cursed land  _knows_.)

The feeling of nothing under her feet or back – or anything – is brief, but wondrous. She can hear his screaming – his enraged screaming, that he will  _get_  her, he will rip out her spine after he steals the blood form her veins and the meat off her bones and he will carve her into a crown and then he  _will build her back up from twig and bone and blood and bits of her hair_  and he will  _get_  her and  _never let her go_ , but it’s lost once there is a cold, sharp, stinging slap of water, and suddenly, she is _cold_  – all over.

The current yanks her along – the depths of the river indecipherable as she gasps for breath ( _but she can’t die here or drown here that is her curse **that** is her curse_), and swallows in icy, clear, crisp water – water that is beginning to freeze her from the inside out, but she can feel the _dirt_  that’s been gathering on her skin for  _god knows_  how many days or weeks or nights or years or eons – or  _however long she’s been here_  – she can feel it leaving, she can  _feel_  her feet tingle and numb – her entire body becomes heavy, but because of a  _curse_ , she manages to push herself  _up, up, up_ , till her lungs are sucking in cold air the current is dragging her on, and on, faster than she could ever have hoped to run from  _him_  – and she feels a hysterical laugh bubbling in her chest because all around her, there is  _green_ , and it is  _familiar to her_.

The gray, tattered remains of her dress cling to her frame as she is carried on, until her calloused hands reach out and grab a swaying branch – till she manages to haul herself on the bank, gasping and shivering like she has just been raised from the  _dead_ , and she lies there, with her forehead pressed into the mud, and she finds that she is _crying_.

Crying – because of something, of a  _change_  she will willingly get to know. The air feels warm on her skin, know that her lips and fingertips are beginning to turn blue, and she continues to take in shuddering gulps of air as she lies there, arms limp and crossed under her body.

But, there is another reason.

There are no ghost fingers crawling up and down her spine, sliding in and out of the cracks of her ribs and her bones and her joints and her hips. There is only an emptiness she tends to forget she naturally has, something that tells her that there is something sitting in the back of her mind – something she can’t reach with her shaking hands and shivering legs – something she knows that she could know later on, if this hell changes – if something  _happens_.

It takes Wendy a few minutes to stagger to her feet, and begin to stumble through the trees. The grass is greener, here – soft, under her clean skin, and it rises to her legs.

Yes, something is changing – changing drastically.

( _perhaps it will stop the devil-boy from chasing her footsteps and his desire to wear what emotion that is not fear in her beating heart as a crown of thorns sitting atop his head._ )


	2. When You Find Her Never Let Her Go

Wisps of golden, curly hair do not fly behind her like a halo trying to find its angel, as she runs through the trees, snow crunching under. Peter isn’t far behind her, but she isn’t running from him.

Not this time.

No, over the last several weeks, things have changed. Snow has fallen. She thinks she might have seen snow, once, maybe in a dream, but rarely  _here_ , and it’s never been so deep that her bare feet ( _why hasn’t she lost all her toes_?), but she can’t bring herself to care, because she  _knows_  what she saw.

"Peter," she calls over her shoulder, not looking back, her cheeks hurting from the smile splitting at her cheeks.

It’s been weeks since she saw the green grass. Only days after that, they’d both started having visions.

_Visions_.

That’s what Wendy calls them.

But Peter  _knows_  they’re flashbacks. He  _knows_ , and everything is coming back to him, In pieces, but in big ones. For Wendy? Her fragments? They’re more disjointed, out of order. They don’t make sense to her.

(from what he remembers he hopes that eventually she’ll see that he’s right)

They’ve put their game on hold, for now, though.

"Peter, come on! I know I saw it!"

Wendy has been stumbling away from him for days. She’s not forthcoming about what she sees, about what memories come back to her. (He’s told what they are, but she won’t listen to him. No she won’t but she  _will_.)

And see it, she did. In a land that was slowly become more and more green, bit by bit, with each passing day.

Peter thinks she’s going to point something out to him. Like a flower. Something like  _Wendy_. Maybe something new’s come up. He doesn’t know. (He’s noticed the loop, though. He’s been so  _blind_  not to notice the loop he’s been on for who knows how many years.)

He doesn’t know that Wendy thought she saw a man and a woman, both armed, to the teeth, making their way in a direction she’s never thought to take.

She thinks their camp is still there.

(She saw the smoke.)

But there is a flash of light, suddenly, and she falls to the ground, and, not far behind her, Peter skids to a halt.

The light is blinding, and something bursts in the back of their brains.

"I remember," he breathes, after a moment, "I -  _Wendy_!”

She doesn’t reply.


End file.
